How does HR spend its time? Would you be surprised if I told you that it hasn’t changed much in the past 15 years?
That’s one of the findings from the latest survey conducted by Ed Lawler and John Boudreau of the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California.
This latest survey by Lawler and Boudreau, “queried HR executives from the U.S., Australia, Canada, Europe, the U.K., and China about a host of issues having to do with the current state of the HR profession and function,” according to a news release from the Center for Effective Organizations. “Since 1995, CEO has surveyed a sample of HR executives from large corporations every three years. The current survey is the first to include responses from the international arena.”
As the news release puts it:
Lawler and Boudreau believe that where HR spends it time sheds light on how HR is perceived, how its focus is changing, and what its future might hold.
Many are pondering the vision of a future HR. We’ve seen articles and books about HR’s continuing desire to be seen as a strategic partner in the organization. Certainly everyone in business is becoming more and more aware that human capital is a critical component to the success of any organization. Is HR building upon that fact? …
The authors argue that if HR is changing, survey results would show a shift in what HR does day to day. In fact, over the 15-year-period that this survey has been conducted, there has been very little change in how HR leaders describe how their function spends its time.”
Now the real details about this topic won’t be available until May when the book, Effective Human Resource Management: A Global Analysis, by Edward E. Lawler III and John W. Boudreau (Stanford University Press), is available, but Lawler and Boudreau found that how HR professionals consistently spend their time as follows:
Not a ringing endorsement for that seat at the table, is it? And as the press release about the Lawler and Boudreu work rightly notes:
These figures have remained consistent over time. However, HR executives tend to believe that their HR function has changed both its focus and where it spends time – moving away from administration and towards strategy. The survey findings suggest that this may be an inaccurate perception.
The CEO survey clearly shows that when HR spends more time on recordkeeping, compliance and administration, there is a negative association with HR’s strategic role, HR functional effectiveness, and organizational effectiveness. And if HR spends more time on strategic partnership, the higher the outcomes for those elements. Where time is spent does matter!”
I’ll leave it to all of you to discern what all of this really means for HR, but my guess is that you need to get the book later this spring to really dig into it properly. The early information, however, IS pretty tantalizing — especially if you are one of those many people who wonder where HR is really headed. My guess is that this latest work and insight from Lawler and Boudreau will give us some of the answers.
Of course, there’s more than how HR spends its time in the news this week. Here are some HR and workplace-related items you may have missed. This is TLNT’s weekly round-up of news, trends, and insights from the world of talent management. I do it so you don’t have to.
